Racing the Devil (14 page)

“What makes you think that?”

“If she’d been happy, why would she go out with Ben?”

“Good point.” I tipped my head in acknowledgement. “The night she was killed. Did she say anything about meeting anyone?”

“Not to me.”

“Is Mr. Carrington married?”

“No.” She lowered her eyes. “His wife died about five years ago. Cancer.”

I thought if Carrington wasn’t the murderer, he was the unluckiest bastard on the planet.

I pumped Felicity for a little more information, just enough to ascertain that she knew nothing more about the murdered woman. Then I asked if I could take a look at Amy’s work space.

“Well.” She bit her lip. “I don’t know.”

I gave her my best, most charming smile, the one Maria said had made her marry me. “I promise to leave everything exactly how I found it.”

She stared into my eyes for a long moment, possibly trying to gauge my sincerity. At last, she said, “All right. But don’t mess up anything.”

She went back to her own desk, leaving me alone at Amy’s.

I slid into the dead woman’s chair and scanned her work space, trying to get a sense of who she was and why someone might have wanted to kill her. I sat at her desk and soaked her in, from the jumbled cork bulletin board and color-coded file folders to the family photograph on one corner of her desk. I picked up the photograph and studied it, my tongue worrying at the scab on my lower lip.

I recognized Amy from the pictures I’d seen in the news, and Calvin and the girls from yesterday afternoon. Calvin looked stern and solemn in his dark suit. One hand rested on his wife’s shoulder. It might have been a protective gesture, but in light of their troubled marriage, seemed possessive and proprietary instead. Amy, wearing a flowered skirt and a peach sweater covered with seed pearls, had an arm around each of her daughters, who looked scrubbed and fresh-faced in their matching jumpers.

I looked into Amy’s eyes.
Who are you?
I thought at the photograph.
Come on, baby, talk to me
.

Of course, she didn’t talk to me. She stared out of the picture, a strange blend of pride and sadness on her face.

Who are you?

A woman who felt overwhelmed by her children. Who had tried—and possibly failed—to love another woman’s daughter. Who had given up everything to be what her husband wanted and finally decided she wanted some of it back.

Had it gotten her killed?

Why had she gone to the Cedar Valley Motel?

The calendar on her desk revealed no clues. Daily appointments were marked in a careful, even hand. Doodles framed the printed squares, not the usual hearts and spirals, but real drawings: a lone palm tree on a tiny hump of island, a cartoon Volkswagen with flat tires and a sad face, a cute-as-hell fly in a multi-sleeved turtleneck trying to pull free from a piece of flypaper, a chorus line of dancing raisins wearing clown noses and Groucho Marx mustaches. Escape and isolation. The raisins looked happy enough, but wasn’t the disguise really just another way to escape?

The drawers of her desk were neatly organized: brochures, contracts, pens, and paper clips. In one drawer, I found a Nora Roberts paperback, a copy of
Chicken Soup for the Soul
, and a hardcover volume called
The Incest Survivor’s Handbook
. I thought of the photos Frank had found in my truck and wondered if Amy had known Katrina was being abused.

I went back to Felicity’s desk.

“Did Amy work on Friday?” I asked.

“Yes, of course.” Her startled eyebrows tried to lift a little higher. “Why wouldn’t she?”

“No reason. Just covering the bases. Did she say anything about going to see anyone that night? A date? An appointment?”

“No. She said she was going home. But when I left, she and Ben were outside in the parking lot, talking.”

“Could you tell what they were talking about?”

The look she gave me was withering. “I don’t eavesdrop.”

“No, of course not. But you might have overheard something in passing. Sometimes you can’t help but hear something.”

“Oh.” She seemed somewhat mollified. “I guess that’s true. But no, I didn’t hear anything.”

“Did they seem upset? Angry?”

“They looked like a couple of high school sweethearts saying goodbye after school. You know. One more thing, then one more thing. Like they couldn’t stand to leave.”

“Did you go straight home after work?”

“No. I had dinner at Ruby Tuesday’s, then went home and watched
Silverado
on cable.”

I grinned. “I saw that movie six times. Tell me you’re not married.”

She smiled, eyes downcast. Demure. Flattered and embarrassed. “I’m not married.”

“Woman of my dreams,” I teased. Then, “I don’t guess you’d let me take a look at Ben’s desk, would you?”

She frowned. “Well . . .”

“I won’t bother anything.”

“I’ll tell you what.” She nibbled at a long, almond-shaped nail. “I’ll let you take a peek on the way out. But you can’t touch anything.”

I held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

Ben’s desk had a few scattered Post-its and brochures.

Call Margaret
.

Corey. Ballet. Sat. aft
.

There was a picture of a woman holding a baby, a smaller photo of a smiling little girl in a pink tutu tucked into the frame.

“Corey?” I asked, pointing to the picture.

“Mmhm. That’s his daughter. She’s six now.”

“And Margaret?”

“Babysitter.”

“Ah.”

“Is that all you need?”

I thought about asking for her number, but what would I say if I called her?
Hello, I’m not really an author and I lied to you about pretty much everything, and I’m the only suspect in the murder of your colleague. Want to go out sometime?

Right.

“That’s everything,” I told her.

After an awkward silence, she flashed me a smile and said, “Well. Why don’t you just take my card? In case you need to ask me anything else.”

She handed me a business card that said,
Felicity Ambrose. Windrider Travel Agency. We’ve planned more trips than Timothy Leary
.

I don’t usually like drug jokes, but it was so unexpected, I laughed when I read it. “Well. Thanks, Felicity. Thanks for everything.”

I gave her an appreciative smile and tucked the card into the inside pocket of my suit jacket.

Then, regretfully, I got into my rental car and left.

THAT NIGHT, JAY AND I
watched as Ashleigh’s station broadcast a memorial service at Amy Hartwell’s church. Ashleigh looked pained and sincere as she introduced the show in front of the Road to Glory Church of the Reclamation. The cameras returned to her throughout the program to show us how touched she was. This was done primarily by showing her dabbing at her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief, with an occasional close-up of her quivering lips. Ashleigh Arneau, compassion incarnate.

Yeah, right.

“I really hate that bitch,” Jay said. I’d told him where and how I’d been arrested. “Let’s burn her in effigy.”

“She’ll get hers someday,” I said, but I didn’t believe it. People like Ashleigh never get theirs.

The thing is, if I’d really thought she’d turned me in out of some sense of duty, or honor, or citizenship, I might have actually admired her. But I knew better. Ashleigh was a glory-hunter. If she’d ever had a noble instinct, she’d long since choked it into catatonia.

The service started with a welcome and a prayer. The choir sang “Amazing Grace.” Then members of the congregation stood up and said some complimentary things about Amy. They mentioned their love and sympathy for Calvin, along with their hopes that he and the girls could get over this and go on with their lives. Calvin stood up, red-eyed, and said he hoped the Lord would show his dear wife mercy. Then the honorable Reverend Samuel Avery stepped up to the podium.

I sat up straighter. He was the same minister I’d seen at the jail. Same porcine build. Same balding, egg-shaped head. Same angry scar. He opened his mouth, and the voice that came out was soft and slithery like the serpent in the Garden of Eden. The very sound of it made me want to punch someone.

I’d heard that voice somewhere before.

Amy Hartwell, he said, had fallen into temptation, but he held out hope that she’d had time to repent before her grisly death. The Lord was merciful, he said, and so, despite her fall from grace, she might yet see the glorious face of the Almighty. If she had repented with her last breaths.

If.

Beside me, Jay murmured, “My God. In front of the children.”

When Avery had finished, Valerie Shepherd sang a dramatic rendition of “How Great Thou Art.” Her voice rose high and clear, ending on a note that must have made the stained glass windows tremble. I’d been wrong about her voice; she didn’t sound like someone who should have been singing on top of a piano. She sang like she’d been born to it. Although her cheeks were streaked with tears, the smile on her face was orgasmic.

She was good, even by Nashville standards, where your waitress, your pharmacist, and the guy who services your car might all be Garth Brooks wannabes.

The camera panned to the blond man Valerie had picked up at the recording studio. He nodded and bobbed to the music, turning knobs and dials on a console that had probably cost as much as my truck. After the song was over, he gave Valerie a thumbs-up and a broad, gold-studded grin.

Jay shook his head in admiration, “Now there is the next Streisand.”

“Which? The singer, or the blond guy?”

“The singer. Blondie would look like hell in drag. Not that he isn’t gorgeous.”

I looked more closely at Blondie. His knuckles sported jail-house tattoos, LOVE on one hand and HATE on the other. Probably the black sheep boyfriend Birdie had mentioned. I wondered why, if he was Valerie’s boyfriend, she had planted a long hot kiss on Ian Callahan.

I wondered about the man who had used my name to rent a motel room and then killed a woman in it.

“Gorgeous aside,” I said. “Does that guy look anything like me?”

His gaze swung from me to the blond guy and back again. “You’re of a type,” he said.

“Enough so a motel clerk might think he was me?”

He shrugged. “Fake beard, cowboy hat, ponytail tucked under to make the hair look shorter . . . your hair’s a little darker and your teeth are better, but if they weren’t paying attention, I guess maybe.”

I made a mental note to learn more about Blondie.

After the final prayer and as the congregation poured out onto the sidewalk, Ashleigh thrust her microphone into Tara Hart-well’s ashen face. Kneeling beside the child, Ashleigh said in her sweetest voice, “Sweetheart, is there something you’d like to say about your mama?”

There was a long silence. Ashleigh, knowing the value of a dramatic moment, waited. I saw Calvin Hartwell’s hand tighten on his daughter’s shoulder.

Tara said sadly, “My mama’s in Hell.”

“What?” Ashleigh blinked. Her mouth twitched, as if it couldn’t decide whether to protest or smile.

In other circumstances, I would have enjoyed seeing Ashleigh gaping and speechless on live TV. But I couldn’t get that kid’s face out of my head, or that small, lost voice.

Then the moment was gone. Calvin Hartwell picked his daughter up and whisked her away to his car. Katrina, the twelve-year-old, scurried after them, one hand clutching at the tail of her daddy’s jacket.

I
T ISN
’
T ALL THAT HARD
to follow a man who doesn’t know he’s being followed. On Friday morning, after I’d taken care of the horses and left a message from Ian Callahan on Reverend Avery’s answering machine, I sat in my rental car, my Sony digital camera and a briefcase full of surveillance equipment on the seat beside me, and watched Cal Hartwell and the girls leave their house bright and early the next morning. I gave them a lead of half a block before pulling out behind them.

The tricky part was while we were still in Hartwell’s neighborhood, because traffic was so thin it was almost nonexistent until we turned onto Lebanon Road. Technically, it’s the Sergeant Lance Fielder Memorial Highway, but no one calls it that because it takes almost as long to say as it does to drive. I know, I know. If someone had named a road after my dad, I’d want people to know it. But it’s been Lebanon Road for as long as anyone can remember. Old habits die hard. Look at the metric system.

I stayed three or four cars behind the champagne Park Avenue, except on the side streets, where there were no cars for cover and I had to drop back almost out of view.

Cal dropped his daughters off at an elementary school not far from their house.
Welcome to Fun Factory
, said the sign out front.
Summer Activity Program
. I’d figured a guy like Hartwell would put his kids in a private school, but here they were, the younger girl in pink slacks and a SpongeBob SquarePants T-shirt, the elder in a light blue jumper. They got out of the car, and Cal called them back for a final hug. Then they entered the building hand in hand, clutching the straps of their backpacks like two lost souls.

They didn’t look back.

For a week after Dad died, Randall stayed home from school. He says he still remembers his first day back in his third-grade classroom. It looked exactly the same, but he felt strange and different from the other children. Something terrible had happened to him and his family, and it set him apart. He couldn’t have said how or why, but it was true. “I’m half an orphan,” he remembers thinking, “and my daddy is a hero.”